A Gentleman's Position (Society of Gentlemen) (2 page)

M
ARCH 8, 1820

“Bear off,” Silas said smugly. “And that’s you gammoned.”

David sat back with a sigh. It had not been one of his better performances, and Silas, a bludgeoning, brutal opponent at the backgammon board, was developing a knack for strategy too. “Blast you,” he muttered, and totted up the points with a wince. In their ongoing contest, Silas’s score was definitely creeping upward.

“Another round?” Silas suggested.

David glanced at the clock. It was only half past midnight, but he shook his head. “I think not.”

“Thought they were on a spree. You can’t be expecting his lordship back before two at the earliest.”

“No. Well.”

Silas shrugged and topped up his glass as David began to pack away the counters. He tilted the bottle toward David’s tumbler in invitation; David shook his head again. “No? It’s probably best. With you on a losing streak and all.”

“Two games don’t constitute a losing streak,” David objected. “Unlike the seven in a row you lost last week.
That
was a streak.”

He had taken a strong and unexpected liking to Silas, rough-tongued lout that he was. David’s position isolated him from the rest of the household, since valets were outside the hierarchy of servants. He was Lord Richard’s man, answering to nobody else, and it set him apart. He would have tolerated more than solitude for his place, but over four years and more, it had become tiresome that nobody would even give him a game for fear of beating him.

Silas spoke as he liked and not only tried his best to trounce David at backgammon but crowed about it when he did. David was slightly startled at how much he enjoyed having a friend in the house.

Silas took a swallow of gin. “Here, I was reading something the other day that’ll interest you. Philosopher fellow, writing on whether animals have souls.”

“You think animals have souls?” David asked incredulously.

“Me? I don’t think people have souls.”

David winced. “Keep that to yourself. No atheism on Lord Richard’s time, thank you.”

“Don’t ask if you don’t want to know. Anyway, he had a story about dogs who know when their owner’s on his way. They’ll jump to the window or the front door for no reason, couldn’t have heard anything, and five minutes later he arrives. Animal instinct or some such, I don’t know. Point is, they can sense when their master’s coming home.”

It sounded plausible enough, but Lord Richard did not own dogs, and therefore David didn’t care. “Well, and?”

“And what?”

“You said it would interest me. I’m waiting to find out why.”

Silas gave him an evil grin. “No reason.”

David returned a suspicious look, then shut the backgammon box and put it on the shelf. They were playing in his bedroom, since it was more comfortable for everyone if they both avoided the servants’ hall. As Lord Richard’s valet, David had a room big enough to accommodate a table with two chairs, more space than he’d ever had before in his life, but he’d spent too long arranging gentlemen’s rooms to tolerate anything less than perfect order in his own.

“If you’re going to bore me with pointless tales—” he began, and then his head snapped up as the bell rang.

“That’ll be Lord Richard coming home,” Silas observed with immense satisfaction. “Lucky you were ready for him, eh?”

David was momentarily lost for words. “Go shove your mother,” he managed at last. “You blasted gutter-blood.”

Silas lifted his glass in a toast, grinning, as David scooped up his coat. “Off you go. Give his lordship my love. I’ll just finish your gin.”

“I hope it chokes you.” David checked his hair in his little mirror. It was impeccably powdered, none of the telltale red visible.

“Cheers to you too. Night.”

“Good night.” David hurried out. Behind him, Silas coughed stagily. It sounded very like a bark.

Lord Richard had not rung for him, of course. That would never do. The bell was a warning from the footman that Lord Richard had come home so that David could be ready before he was needed. Lord Richard might have brought a parcel of friends with him and intend to stay up talking for hours more, and if he did, David would simply wait rather than let Lord Richard come up to an unattended bedroom. One did not earn the reputation of being the best valet in London by thinking of one’s own comfort.

The best valet in London, occupying one of the best positions. When Lord Richard’s previous valet had left his service to marry, the vacant post had been fought over with startling viciousness by men who were prepared to abandon their masters and sabotage their friends to secure it. David had made damned sure he won that silently waged war. He had wanted Lord Richard, and—professionally—he’d got him.

Of course, every valet in London had wanted him. Lord Richard was a generous employer of immense social standing and, most important, a superb man to dress—too big for the kickshaws of fashion, granted, but his broad shoulders and deep chest carried off a plain style to perfection, and that was where a valet’s skill was best shown. Nothing hidden, everything impeccable.

“The most desirable gentleman in Town,” John Frampling had remarked enviously. He was valet to Julius Norreys, exquisite, who served as a very satisfactory shop window for Frampling’s skills, but there was no love lost between man and master. “Of course, my Mr. Norreys has the better eye and more
range,
if I may put it that way, but he’s a right cold-hearted prick, if you want the truth. Whereas Lord Richard is a credit to you, Mr. Cyprian,
and
everyone says he’s a dream to serve.”

That he was. David’s dream. David’s nightmare.

The room was ready, naturally. He moved around it anyway, making sure not a stray hair or spot of dust sullied Lord Richard’s private space. Everything should be perfect for his lordship, always. That was what David did. It was what he was
for.

The bed was made, counterpane perfectly flat. He tweaked it anyway.

The bed wouldn’t creak under the weight of two men. Lord Richard disliked furniture that complained of his size, and he was far too wealthy to tolerate anything that he disliked. Lord Richard could have anything he chose.

He could have David.

He didn’t choose to.

They were always in the bedroom, morning and night, David and his master. He brought tea and hot water. Dressed his lordship, groomed him, shaved him, made him the image of a fine gentleman in the morning then took it all apart again at night, always with that bed lurking at the corner of David’s eye. Every morning, Lord Richard could have reached out a hand for him, pulled him onto the bed. Every night, he could have pushed David just a few steps back from the mirror and the marble-topped dressing table and put him flat on his back. David had never presumed to lie on Lord Richard’s bed, but he
knew
how the counterpane would feel, cool and smooth against bare skin, just as he knew how the bed would dip when Lord Richard’s seventeen stone came down over his own slim frame. He could feel the weight on his chest, his master’s mouth on his, those big, smooth hands cupping his arse…

Another bell. His lordship was coming up.

“Good evening, my lord,” David said as his master entered. “I hope Lord Gabriel has had an enjoyable birthday?”

“He has and is continuing to do so, with enthusiasm.” Lord Richard was not a heavy drinker, but he’d had a few glasses; David could smell it on him and see red pigment on his lips, like paint. His mouth would taste of wine.

David moved behind Lord Richard, reaching up to remove his coat. He stood six inches shorter than Lord Richard and was much more slender, a whippet to his master’s mastiff. In the mirror, as Lord Richard looked at himself, David would be invisible. He always was.

“You’re early back, my lord.” David eased the superbly cut coat off those broad, strong shoulders, feeling the muscles move as Lord Richard dropped them to make his valet’s task easier.

“Mmm. Ash and Harry were in full celebratory mood. It made me feel rather old.”

David clicked his tongue reprovingly. His master was thirty-seven years old, in the prime of life, and his dark brown hair was only just beginning to shade silver over his ears.

“Julius sends his regards,” Lord Richard added. “He asked me to convey that he’d like to steal you from my service and offered a fabulous sum.”

“It’s very kind of him, my lord,” David murmured, bringing the coat over Lord Richard’s hands. Such big, powerful hands, beautifully kept because David kept them, every nail polished and perfectly shaped.

“It’s damned impertinence,” Lord Richard said, as David took the coat to hang it up. “I asked him, if I were married, would he have me convey his messages to my wife?”

David shut his eyes. He didn’t need to see to go about his work, in any case; he could have cared for Lord Richard’s clothes in the dark and identified each coat by touch. He smoothed out the heavy cloth carefully, lovingly, taking his time.

“More to the point,” Lord Richard added, “I met Peter Arlett, and he says that cursed awkward business of his is resolved. Thank you. I trust it wasn’t too inconvenient?”

“No trouble at all, my lord.” Mr. Arlett, a lawyer and one of the Ricardians, had been careless in his cups and revealed a client’s secrets to a Grub Street scandalmonger. David had tracked down the fellow and persuaded him that it would be in his interests to forget what he’d heard. “Mason was very helpful,” he added. “He knows Grub Street well.”

“He’s earning his keep, certainly.” Lord Richard pulled at his cravat. David moved closer, putting up his hands for the cloth, and Lord Richard dropped his own hands to give him access. Such a big man, so strong, yet he stood there passively while David worked over his body. David gently loosened the complex folds, painfully aware of how close his fingers were to the skin of Lord Richard’s throat.

“And I’m very glad you could help Peter,” Lord Richard went on, “although he seems to be convinced it was all my doing. You are giving me an undeserved reputation for omnipotence.”

They’d discussed this before. “Take the credit, my lord. It’s easier for me to work if gentlemen don’t notice me. And I do it all on your orders, so…” David carefully pulled the length of cloth from around Lord Richard’s neck.

“Indeed. The things I ask you to do, or that you know I wish you to do, or that you do without telling me because you know very well I should refuse.” He gave David a pointed look. David adopted an expression of such exceptional blankness that Lord Richard laughed aloud.

He had not been happy at David’s solution to Mr. Frey’s problem. He would have far preferred to see Silas packed off to the Americas than to take the radical into his household. But it had undeniably saved Silas’s skin and repaired Lord Richard’s friendship with Mr. Frey, and after a somewhat stormy few days, Lord Richard had accepted the wisdom of David’s course.

A course that put Silas Mason in front of Lord Richard’s face every day as a reminder that the lost love of his life had found happiness elsewhere and that it was time for Lord Richard to do the same.

It seemed their thoughts were running along similar lines, because his master said, “Dominic was there tonight.”

“Well, I hope?”

“Very well. I have not seen him so content in a long time. I wish to God I could understand why.” Lord Richard sighed. “Not that it matters. I am not required to understand, merely to accept.”

“I like Mason, my lord. He’s an interesting man.”

“So I’m told.” Lord Richard tugged off his signet ring and handed it over. “I trust he’s not trying to convert you to radical causes?”

“I’m not political. Which I think he finds rather trying,” David added demurely.

“God bless you, Cyprian. Oh, well, it makes Dominic happy. For now, at least.” David shot him a questioning look at that. Lord Richard turned up his hands in answer. “It can hardly last, can it? Dominic is a gentleman of good family, and Mason is the sweepings of the street. I cannot think it possible. In the end, the divide is surely too great.”

David stared down at the box from which Lord Richard’s golden fobs and rings glinted at him, a fortune in trinkets casually bought and rarely used. His extremely generous annual salary would have purchased three or four of the smaller items. “There is a divide, my lord. But I think Mr. Frey knows what is right for himself.”

“I would like to believe that. I wish I could.”

“Well, but why not? Mr. Frey is content. Mason is doing useful work rather than fomenting sedition. The Vane libraries are in good hands. Surely all that counts for more than concerns of place.”

“Ah, you are a Benthamite.” Lord Richard smiled at him in the mirror—not his society smile but that rare, sweet, open look that stopped David’s breath every time. “The greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

David had no more interest in philosophy than in politics, and the greatest number could go hang themselves for all he cared. There were perhaps five people in the world for whose happiness

he gave a damn at all, two who really mattered, and one of those was smiling at him now in a way that hurt his heart.

He moved to unbutton Lord Richard’s waistcoat. It was just on the cusp between perfectly fitted and a little tight; Lord Richard had put on a couple of pounds over the winter. David eased a gilt button smoothly through its slit. “Merely a practical thinker, my lord,” he said. “If it is right for the people involved, then I cannot see why it should be wrong for anyone else.”

“There we differ,” Lord Richard said. “One cannot disregard worldly concerns, or moral ones. Nevertheless, I wish I had been more practical with Dominic a long time ago, and I wish you had been with me then. I feel quite sure you would have helped me do better.”

“My lord, you did what you could. Mr. Frey is responsible for himself.” Another button slipped free under David’s fingers. It was such a temptation to take longer over this, each undoing a little blissful torture. “And whatever has passed between you is done with now. There is no need for regrets.”

“I disagree once more. Do you not have regrets?” Lord Richard asked.